I’m starting to experience broken holding tabs on the resin trays. This is the second tray that this has happened too.
Notice a banging while printing and on observing the printing I can see the Resin Tray lift at one corner when the Build Plate is lifted up. Then it snaps back down once the adhesion is broken. I confirmed this when the job was finish and found that corner of the resin tray would lift about a 1/4" not the other corners.
Any one else observed this problem?
Not having the issue with broken tabs, but did have another tray go down because it started to leak. I also noticed that the trays acrylic is starting to crack/or the silicone. I think they are just cheap trays something must have changed. I received my LT tanks and they look like they were much more well thought out.
Examined a new resin tray and the tabs are at a right angle to the support. That’s a good way to have them snap off as it’s most likely a weak stress point.
The tray lifting with peel is something i’ve noticed too, with prints that have a base across a large area of the platform/vat.
I think it’s partly due to the changed peel - i wasn’t using my form2 for a long time, and had a chance to go from the old peel (sideways move, then simultaneous sideways move + lift, then lift) to the new one from a year ago (lift first, which rips the print right off, then sideways move, which seems superfluous). The effect on the tray for large bases seems pretty noticeable.
I had one tray, that had resin sitting in it for months, so was probably already pretty weakened, actually crack (the acrylic window cracked, luckily, very little resin seeped through. This is an extreme edge case, mind you. I’ve also had one fresh tray’s PDMS layer delaminate from acrylic in spots. I can’t tell if that was an issue with the tray or due to peel forces. FormLabs sent me a replacement, we’ll see how it fares on similar prints (large base) in the future.
In general, it seems FormLabs is starting to optimize the whole process more and more for about 1 sigma of the use cases, at the risk of making the remaining part of the gauss curve less reliable.
If the resin tray is lifting at all most likely the tab at the corner is broken. The tray should NOT lift during printing. That’s the whole idea of the locking tabs, to hold it firmly down.
Lifting may be a bad description, at least in my case.
Deforming/bending is a more accurate one.
The acrylic window, along with its frame (and, of course, the PDMS) deforms from the peel forces.
And i think that is what leads to broken tabs eventually.
Either that, or a cracked acrylic window, whichever comes first.
Can you open a ticket with our support team? The Resin Tank tabs shouldn’t fail with normal wear, and we’ll help to look into other potential causes and work towards a solution. This is also allows us to identify how prevalent issues like these are in the field, so if you could include your PreForm and Firmware version in the ticket, that would be a big help.
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